General Mills releases ‘first new breakfast cereal in 15 years’
From FoodBev.com
General Mills has launched its first new cereal brand in 15 years, after exploring a new way to incorporate real fruit into its products.
Shaped like small pieces of toast and sprinkled with blueberries and strawberries, Tiny Toast boasts a fresh fruit aroma and taste. Designed to have a similar family appeal to Honey Nut Cheerios and Cinnamon Toast Crunch, it is the first new cereal from General Mills since it launched the now-discontinued Harmony cereal in 2001.
Originally, the team behind Tiny Toast set out to make a layered cereal with either a cherry filling or a spread – but the concept proved too expensive and not particularly viable, so General Mills coated the cereal with fruit on the outside. The fruity flavours come from strawberry and blueberry powders – though the coarse powders more closely resemble a flake that provides Tiny Toast with its great taste and appearance.
“Tiny Toast gives you this really large pop of aroma that’s missing from those other fruit cereals,” said Mike Evenson, product developer for General Mills’ innovation, technology and quality division. “We watched how consumers responded when they first opened a box, and they were stunned at how good it smelled.”